The civilian death toll from a series of apparent Iraqi Security Force or United States-led
coalition attacks between February and April 2017 suggests that the
forces took inadequate precautions to avoid civilian casualties and that
further investigation is needed, Human Rights Watch said today. Human
Rights Watch documented seven attacks that resulted in at least 44
civilian deaths in five populated neighborhoods of west Mosul controlled
by the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Human Rights Watch analysis of satellite imagery of western Mosul
identified over 380 distinct impact sites in the Tanak neighborhood,
where three of the seven attacks occurred, consistent with the
detonation of large, air-dropped munitions between March 8 and April 26,
when Iraqi forces declared they had regained control of the area.
Munitions of this size can pose an excessive risk to civilians when used
in populated areas, given their large blast and fragmentation radius.
All warring parties should cease using explosive weapons with wide area
effects in densely populated west Mosul.“Residents and displaced people have sheltered for months in crowded
houses, with ISIS sometimes using them as human shields, so any strikes –
including the choice of weapons – should take these conditions into
account,” said Priyanka Motaparthy,
senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “As Iraqi and
coalition forces press forward with the west Mosul offensive, they
should make sure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum.”

.@AmericanLegion is right. My bill, HR 1227 would help veterans get the treatment they need.

45 replies493 retweets1,110 likes

When Tulsi's attacked and Howard's not, we live in an upside down world.

Every time he pipes off, some reporter should be asking about his
previous statements. Such as in January of 2004, when he insisted "I
opposed the war in Iraq and I'm against spending another $87 billion
there."

Then why are you silent today, he should be asked, as the bill is now in the trillions?

He was a fake and remains one. The media lets him get away with it.
Idiots in the Democratic Party (not all members of the Democratic Party
are idiots -- but a small strain of loud mouths regularly flaunt their
ignorance) celebrate him as heroic. He's a joke and, by supporting him,
they make themselves jokes.

On June 16 through 18, the United National Anti-War Coalition
(UNAC) will hold its annual conference, under the theme: “Stop the Wars
at Home and Abroad: Building a Movement Against War, Injustice and
Repression.” For three days, the convention center in Richmond,
Virginia, will likely be the sanest building in the nation, the one
place where you won’t be subjected to a barrage of warmongering
fantasies about Russian threats to a non-existent American democracy.
Instead, hundreds of activists from a broad range of organizations will
be hard at work building alternatives to the Democrats and Republicans
who have plunged the world into endless war and condemned most people in
the United States to a dismal future of economic insecurity, the worst
health care system in the developed world –- and if you’re Black, the
ever-present threat of sudden death at the hands of police.The all-seeing, eternally-listening, omnivorous data-crunching
mechanisms of the national security state that was once justified by
manufactured fears of Soviet Russians, then exponentially expanded to
cage, kill and contain Black revolutionaries, and then vastly reinforced
again to criminalize Black people as a group, creating the world’s
biggest mass incarceration police state; this same repressive machinery
that, after 9/ll, tracked and entrapped Muslim Americans like hunted
prey, now spies upon the electronic communications of the entire world,
mapping, profiling and, when possible, actively manipulating every wired
person on the planet, as if the whole of humanity is a security risk to
the rulers of the U.S. empire.

In 2004, we said we wanted peace.

For far too many, those were empty words just being uttered for partisan purposes.

For those who actually meant them, you need to step up and start calling out these never-ending wars.

The Iraq War started in 2003.

It's now 2017.

Various politicians have stepped into the public square to insist they would end it.

It hasn't been ended.

There needs to be honesty, there needs to be accountability and there needs to be action.